Azerbaijan-Armenia: Progress Made, But No Agreement Yet, U.S. Says

The United States said on Monday it has noted the 'progress', albeit without agreement, achieved during the latest Azerbaijani-Armenian dialogue last week in Washington, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.

"We have made progress. I’m not going to speak to it in detail. But we don’t have an agreement yet, and we’re not going to rest until we reach one," State Department's spokesperson Matthew Miller told a daily briefing when responding to TURAN's questions on Secretary of State Antony Blinken's meeting with Azerbaijani and Armenian counterparts last week in the margins of the NATO Summit.

"You heard the Secretary say this at the opening of the meeting in his public comments... that the two parties have made incredible progress and they have come a long way.  And so what we continue to do is push them," Miller added.

America's top diplomat told ministers Jeyhun Bayramov and Ararat Mirzoyan that he wanted to see "what more the United States can do to be helpful in helping you reach an agreement."

According to Miller, a peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia "would mean so much for those countries and it would mean so much for the region – for peace, stability, for security in the region."

"We do think a deal is possible, but it requires both sides to make some difficult choices and tough compromises, and so what we’re going to do is continue to push them to resolve those final differences and reach an agreement," the spokesperson concluded.

Armenia said last month that it was ready to sign a peace agreement with Baku "within a month." Azerbaijan's Ilham Aliyev was also quoted last week as saying that the text of the agreement could be finalised within a matter of months.